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Mr. Norris: Will my hon. Friend, as a sponsor of the Bill, express a view on the value of our taking action clearly limited to a few months' duration, after which, assuming that there had been no legal challenge in the meantime, the provision would lapse? Is that the way in which the House should proceed on a matter of such importance?
Mr. Spring: My hon. Friend raises a valid point.The point of this debate is to give him more strength in his negotiations with the European Commission to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. The fact that the Bill enjoys cross-party support and the overwhelming backing of public opinion in the United Kingdom should send a message to him. Whatever can be done to resolve the problem permanently should be done. I am confident that my hon. Friend will be able to do that as speedily as possible.
Mr. Flynn: Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear,as perhaps I did not in my speech, that the letter from Europe last May set out three methods for Britain to take unilateral action to ban bull bars? In connection with only one of those was a temporary ban mentioned. The other two methods suggested would have been permanent bans, and Europe has confirmed three times in the past six weeks that we can still choose any one of those three methods on our own.
Mr. Spring: With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister would care to address that point.
Mr. Norris: That intervention by the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) has produced a version of the correspondence greatly different from my understanding of it. No doubt the Commission may have suggested that there are three courses of action open to the United Kingdom Government, but the Commission has agreed with me, and the Commissioner has agreed with me personally face to face, that none of the three options presents a satisfactory long-term solution. That is the
point that I was asking my hon. Friend to address, and I repeat it. I fear that the hon. Member for Newport, West is in danger of misleading the House if he suggests otherwise. I do not mean that he would knowingly wish to mislead; nevertheless what he said would be misleading.
Mr. Spring: I conclude by repeating that I support the Bill, I support the principle behind it, and I believe that the overwhelming majority of people in Britain also support it in principle. There is no reason why, while the negotiations between my hon. Friend the Minister and the European Commission are going on, there cannot be unilateral action by organisations throughout this country.
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham): I shall now make what I hope will be the shortest speech on the Floor of the House in my career. I totally agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West(Mr. Flynn) has said, and also with the powerful case made by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds(Mr. Spring).
I wish simply to underline what has been made clear in all the written communications from Europe. In the letter from Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock to the Minister dated May last year, the Commission outlined three specific measures that the United Kingdom could take. The director-general of the transport directorate within the Commission, in correspondence with an individual in this country dated March this year, stressed that the United Kingdom has the power to take unilateral action.
In a letter dated 27 March, not three days ago, the Royal Automobile Club reported a meeting of the European Commission with members of both the transport and the trade directorates, at which Commission officials were adamant that there were courses of action that the UK Government could take unilaterally.
It would therefore be wrong--indeed, bordering on the misleading--for the Minister to suggest that the Government do not have powers to adopt such measures.
I finish by urging Conservative Members--
Mr. Dover:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. MacShane:
I was just about to finish.
Mr. Dover:
Just one quick query. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us the date of the letter from the Commissioner? The Minister may have met the Commissioner long after that date.
Mr. MacShane:
As I said, the letter was dated May last year. But since then there have been two written communications, one dated March 1996--we cannot get
Mr. Norris:
The hon. Gentleman used the word "misleading"; I have also used that word. It might be helpful to him, in considering which of us is right, if I quote from a letter that I received from Neil Kinnock on 7 November last year. He said:
A key to this debate is that that was an opinion that he expressed, which is not shared by the people who advise me on such matters. Even if the situation were as the Commissioner suggests, he says in terms that the measures he proposes do not represent a long-term solution.
Mr. MacShane:
In the long term, we shall all be dead. In the meantime, can we at least protect some children from these wretched bull bars? Every written communication and every meeting between the Commissioner and the Transport Select Committee and the European Legislation Select Committee confirmed what he said last year, and what has been said as late as this month.
Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham):
I do not want to bring a gritty tone into the debate, but I must say that I do not agree with the Bill. Perhaps one of the more unattractive features of private Members' days in the House,on Fridays, is that the majority of the Bills that we seek to introduce are those that seek to stop people doing something that they want to do. We must consider carefully before we do that, because the right to choose and to make one's own decisions in life is extremely precious.
The hon. Members for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) and for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) used an emotional arm-lock on us. They said that if one more child should die because of an accident, we would be to blame. If they want to save lives, they should introduce a Bill to ban young men under 25 driving high-performance cars. If we want to reduce the death rate on the roads, those are the people whom we shall have to stop. High-performance cars are no more and no less a fashion accessory than are bull bars.
I make it clear that I have no particular enthusiasm for bull bars. I do not have them on any of the cars that I own because I find no need for them. The hon. Member for Newport, West said that they are macho and unattractive, but the House's purpose is not to legislate on people's taste; the House's purpose is much more serious than that.
I may not like beards, for instance, and I may not like bow ties, but I do not say that the hon. Member for Newport, West should shave off his beard or that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, should not wear a bow tie. Those are purely matters of taste.
If one could demonstrate that bull bars, as they are currently designed, are without doubt dangerous, the situation would of course change; that is what we must debate carefully. In many respects, the Bill is defective.It proposes, of course, a gaol sentence of three months--
Mr. Atkinson:
It proposes a maximum gaol sentence of three months--I take the point--for anyone who has a bull bar on his car, and a very heavy fine, up to level 5. So the Bill is a serious measure. The problem is that the data on which the hon. Gentleman bases his Bill are incomplete, and we do not yet have proof that bull bars are essentially dangerous. The proof is not yet at a stage at which we should be able to take away someone's right to do something that he wishes to do.
"while I agree that the suggestions I made for action by the UK in my letter to you of 24 May do not constitute a long-term solution, they do nonetheless offer possibilities for action by the UK without waiting".
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